Abu Firas al-Suri

Abu Firas al-Suri (born 1949) is a spokesman of the Al-Nusra Front.

Biography
Abu Firas al-Suri was born in 1949 in the countryside of Damascus, Syria. He attended the Military University of Damascus and became a 2nd Lieutenant, but his Islamist views led to him being dismissed in 1979. From 1979 to 1980 he fought against the Syrian regime alongside rebels and after 1980 he fought in Afghanistan with the Mujahideen, having moved his residence to Jordan. He worked with families of Pakistani Mujahideen during the United States' invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, and in 2003 he fled to Yemen. In 2013 he headed to Syria during the Syrian Civil War and became a spokesman for the Al-Nusra Front, an al-Qaeda splintergroup. Soon, the Dawla put Abu Firas on their blacklist and he was with Abu Khaled al-Suri moments before he died in 2014. On 28 September 2014, he issued a statement vowing vengeance against the nations allied with the United States in their bombing campaign in Syria and Iraq against the Al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State that killed Abu Khaled and many other leaders of the two groups.